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A CNN medical correspondent accused Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz of speaking “cruelly faster” during his debate Tuesday with stroke-afflicted Democrat opponent John Fetterman.
In an interview with Jake Tapper Wednesday, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner said he “admired [Fetterman’s] courage” for having done the debate even though he was facing off against a “fast-talking TV doctor.”
“Cruelly faster” comment around 2:10.
“I admire his courage to go on that debate last night. He had to know that he was facing a fast-talking TV doctor who at times seemed to be talking almost intentionally faster, in the face of Mr. Fetterman’s difficulty speaking.”
“Sometimes it appeared almost cruelly faster,” Reiner added.
The Oz/Fetterman debate is difficult to watch and I think it was wrong to place Mr Fetterman in this position. My heart goes out to him.
— Jonathan Reiner (@JReinerMD) October 26, 2022
The medical correspondent attributed Fetterman’s abysmal onstage performance to “expressive aphasia,” which he said is common after a stroke. Reiner admitted, however, it’s difficult to measure Fetterman’s progress considering the Democrat Pennsylvania Lt. Gov.’s campaign has not been transparent with his medical information.
“It’s hard to know. And part of the problem is that the campaign was opaque at the very beginning. They didn’t really disclose the degree of his illness,” Reiner told Tapper. “We don’t really know how sick he was. If we — in fact, his treating physicians were never made available to the press or the public, so we don’t really know how much Mr. Fetterman has actually recovered.”
Reiner warned it’s entirely possible Fetterman may have suffered a “massive event,” but reiterated it’s difficult to determine this without his campaign releasing any medical disclosures.
“So, he might have had a massive event, and if people who had seen him originally might now say, oh, my God, he looks remarkably better, and I bet he does, but not knowing how far he’s come, it’s very difficult to know how far he can go. And it would be good for the people who care for him to be made available to the press. There is no sin in having a stroke. There’s a lot of honor in the dogged determination that it takes to recover, and I admire that. What I don’t admire is the way sort of the campaign has handled the disclosure of his illness.”
The debate was widely seen on both sides of the political aisle as a disastrous failure for Fetterman and a huge win for Oz, with many Democrats left questioning why the debate was agreed upon in the first place.